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Salvia lanceolata is a perennial shrub from the Cape of Good Hope coast in South Africa, growing in sandy soil and on dry hills. It needs sun, sharp drainage and little water, as is typical of dry-climate sages.
Salvia lanceolata (lanceleaf sage) is a perennial shrub native to a small area of coast on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. It is typically found growing in sandy ground at sea level, and on dry hills and flat ground up to 1000 feet elevation. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a pioneer in evolutionary theory, first described and named the plant "lanceolata" in 1791. Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg, who was delayed in South Africa on the way to Japan, first collected it nearly twenty years earlier, along with approximately 3,000 plants that he later described. It wasn't until 1800 that Thunberg gave the plant the specific epithet "nivea", meaning 'snowy' in Latin, referring to the color of the foliage. Because of the rules of nomenclature, Lamarck's name had precedence because he was the first to name it.
Turkish Black Sage · Wuyi Mountain Sage · Salvia adoxoides · Egyptian Sage · Orange Sage · Mediterranean sage · African Blue Sage · Salvia alatipetiolata · Cederberg Sage · Handsome Sage · Algerian Sage · Salvia amethystina
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Salvia lanceolata by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
